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Friday, October 21, 2011

Sending Work Out into the World (or Not Doing That at All!)

Happiness is Submission to God...zilla

That above photo made me smile. Submission to God, or Godzilla, or literary journals, I'm not submitting anywhere these days! In fact, I was looking over my "Days Since" calendar and it's been 81 days since I've submitted a poem. Good one.

I know that submitting one's work is part of the job, but I'm lazy at it and can be a perfectionist. I said I hadn't been submitting because I didn't really have any good poems to send out. Okay, that's fair-- we don't want to display all our half-finished coloring pages, but it's more than that. I have gotten to a point where I really dislike submitting and I've become lazy about it.

If you are reading this as a writer looking for advice, I advise you not to follow my example.

Submitting your work is part of the job of a writer. Longer prose work to an agent. Shorter pieces to literary journals.

So what's my problem?

I've basically just put it off and allowed myself to be unaccountable for that aspect of my writing life. Basically, I like writing more than submitting, so I've written, but haven't sent anything out.

I need to. I connect by email with two other writers and each week (though we've been sloppier about it this year) we mail out our weekly goals.

I will put on my goals that I will send my poems out to two places next week. This is the time of year to be sending out your poems, sort of like adding seeds to the garden so you'll have flowers blooming in a few months.